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Axios Re:Cap

The TikTok economy at risk

Axios Re:Cap

Axios

Daily News, News

4.5705 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the last two days, President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that the White House was considering shutting down TikTok due to security concerns over its relationship with the Chinese government. That news didn’t go over well, as TikTok has an estimated 800 million monthly active users, 30 million of whom are in the U.S. Dan is joined by John Shahidi, who leads one of the country's top management and studio companies for social media influencers, to talk about TikTok’s success in the U.S. and the business ecosystem flourishing around it.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi, I'm Dampromack, and welcome to Axios Recap. Today's Wednesday, July 8th, COVID

0:07.7

hospitalizations in Florida are way up. United Airlines' workforce may be going way down,

0:13.6

and we're focused on the TikTok economy.

0:20.5

TikTok, for those who don't know, is a mobile video sharing app that's quickly become one of the world's largest social networks.

0:28.6

Hootsweet estimates that around 800 million people log on each month, and of those, over half of them, are under 24 years old.

0:37.2

But what's popular with the kids isn't always popular with their parents or grandparents.

0:41.9

And nowhere is that more evident than in Washington, D.C., where President Trump last night

0:46.3

talked about banning TikTok because of its ties to China.

0:49.8

Three things to know.

0:51.0

First, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance.

0:55.0

U.S. officials, particularly in the White House, believe that ByteDance is too closely

0:59.1

tied to the Chinese government, thus possibly putting U.S. user data privacy and cybersecurity

1:04.5

at risk, although the legitimacy of those concerns remains unclear.

1:08.8

Two, TikTok has insisted that its U.S. business, which only makes up

1:12.7

about 5% of its total global business, is siloed. Going so far as to recently hire Disney veteran

1:18.4

Kevin Mayer as its U.S. CEO. Three, U.S. politicians have actually been talking for a while

1:24.1

about their TikTok concerns. We even did an episode of my old podcast on it last

1:28.4

year with Republican Senator Marshall Blackburn. But it's heated up in the past two days,

1:33.3

with Secretary of State Pompeo and then Trump himself, both raising the specter of a ban.

1:38.9

And before you dismiss that out of hand, it's worth noting that India, the whole country,

1:43.3

just banned TikTok,

1:44.5

where it had more than 300 million users. Were TikTok to be banned, obviously, it would be a

...

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